Leo McKinstry

Leo McKinstry is a British journalist and author

Global warming is about hotter, drier weather... not flooding

READERS of this newspaper show more wisdom than self-appointed experts full of hollow theories and fashionable dogma. That truth was highlighted by a letter published yesterday from Alan Keyworth of Leicester about the floods.

Residents wade through floodwater in the village of Wraysbury in Berkshire this week [AFP/GETTY]

As Mr Keyworth pointed out: “Ten years ago the global warming brigade was telling anybody who would listen that the UK would get hotter and drier.”

He is absolutely right. Until recently the airwaves were full of predictions from the environmental lobby that we faced a prolonged period of drought characterised by “parched landscapes” and “rivers reduced to trickles”, to quote one Left-wing newspaper. Yet as the waters continue to rise the green zealots have done a complete reversal.

Suddenly it is dampness, not dryness, that is the big problem. The same force of man-made climate change, which apparently was responsible for the droughts of 2011 and early 2012, is now said to be the cause of the deluges in 2014.

It is a theory that seems to have been swallowed by the entire political establishment, including even normally common-sense figures such as Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles, who was blathering about climate change over the weekend and claimed bizarrely that Britain’s £11billion foreign aid budget would ultimately combat this scourge and thereby reduce flooding.

The eco-zealots, aided by the supine political class, are using the floods as a propaganda weapon in support of their guilt-tripping, interventionist agenda of more green taxes, more regulations, more wind farms and higher energy bills. But that illustrates how cynical and opportunistic they are.

All kinds of weather patterns from arid summers to stormy autumns are now marshalled to support their cause. But this eagerness to blame every unusual incident on climate change reveals the hollowness of their argument. The facts do not match their hysterical rhetoric.

Contrary to their doom-laden forecasts, Earth is not getting hotter at present. Temperatures have remained static for the past 17 years. The green ideologues might be perplexed by this reality but they are not willing to abandon their dogma. So instead of feverish talk about “global warming” as they used to they now speak of climate change and extreme weather, terms that can be exploited for political gain whatever the conditions.

All too predictably the House of Commons was playing this game yesterday at Prime Minister’s Questions. In response to a question about the floods from Green MP Caroline Lucas, who asserted that “climate change will lead to more such events in future”, David Cameron, something of an eco warrior himself, replied: “It is clear we are now seeing more extreme weather events.” It is not clear at all.

That sounds more like Downing Street scaremongering than hard scientific evidence. Yes, the floods are causing misery to thousands of households but there is nothing unprecedented about the weather. In fact in the last century in Britain there were four winters with heavier rainfall.

David Cameron made a visit to the flooded Goodings Farm in Fordgate, Somerset, last week [PA]

As meteorological writer Paul Homewood pointed out in his online blog, “Total precipitation” in the winter of 1929/30 was “much higher than in this winter. In England it amounted to 33 per cent extra”. Nor is there anything unusual about the flooding. Such deluges have been a feature of life here long before industrialisation or concern about manmade climate change.

The Bristol Channel floods of 1607 were so severe that more than 2,000 people died, while up to 15,000 lives were lost during storms that swept across England in December 1703.

Within the past 70 years there have been lethal floods on at least three occasions, most notably in 1953 when more than 300 people were killed, most of them in East Anglia as coastal defences were swept away. The Thames has regularly burst its banks. In January 1928 flooding was so extensive that the waters seeped into the Houses of Parliament.

The damage from the current floods is appalling but has nothing to do with climate change. The problems are caused by a host of factors such as the misguided decision to keep building on flood plains.

In the decade from 2001, 200,000 properties were erected on flood plains and five million people now live or work in areas at significant flood risk. The relentless drive for more homes is driven by population growth fuelled by a mounting birth rate and mass immigration, issues about which the Greens are completely silent.

Just as destructive is the modern practice of concreting over front gardens, which reduces the effective drainage. In the past 25 years more than four million front gardens have disappeared, the equivalent to more than 100 Hyde Parks.

The inefficiency of the Environment Agency has been a crucial issue. This is the quango that has dismally failed to dredge rivers properly or provide effective flood defences, despite annual expenditure of £1.2billion and a workforce of 12,000.

Now bleating about “cuts” to explain away its inadequacy it has still found the cash to spend £2.4million on public relations activities and £30,000 on sponsoring a gay pride festival in Birmingham.

The public deserves better than this. Neither trendy gesture politics nor green ideology will do anything to protect homes and lives.